NONSENSE AS From The Quarterly Review. NONSENSE AS A FINE ART. Wuar is sense? What is nonsense ? Sense is the recognition, adjustment, and maintenance of the proper and fitting relations of the affairs of ordinary life. It is a constitutional tact, a keeping touch with all around it, rather than a conscious and deliberate action of the intellect. It almost seems the mental outcome and expression of our five senses; and per- haps it is for this reason, as well as be- cause the sense of the individual always aims at keeping itself on the average level of his fellows, that we usually talk of sense as common sense. Ii we call it good sense, it is to remind ourselves that there is a right and a wrong in this as in every- thing human, But itis not bad sense, but nonsense, which is the proper contrary of sense, In contradiction to the relations and harmonies of life, nonsense sets itself to discover and bring forward the incon gruities of all things within and without us. Pope couples nonsense with dulness ; yet long before Pope, the thing, if not the ame, nonsense had been recognized as of infinite worth, Cowper and Hogarth shared in the humors of the Nonsense Club; and now the name has been made classical by the writer whose books of nonsense are enumerated at the head of this article, For while sense is, and must remain essentially prosaic and common- place, nonsense has proved not to be an equally prosaic and commonplace negative of sense, not a mere putting forward of incongruities and absurdities, but the bringing out a new and deeper harmony of life in and through its contradictions. Nonsense, in fact, in this use of the word, has shown itself to be a true work of the imagination, a child of genius, and its | writing one of the fine arts, This discomfiture of sense by nonsense, this bringing confusion into order by set- © 1. 4 Book of Nousense. By Edward Lear. Lon doo, i846. Twenty-sixth edition, 1888, 2. Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alpha bets. By Edward Lear. London, 1871. New edition 1838. 3. More Nonsense, Pictures, Rigmes, Botany, etc. By Edward Lear. Londoa, 1872, New edition, 1888. . Lunghable Lyrics, a Fourth Fook of Nonsense, Pooms, Songs, Botany, Music, ee. By kcward Lear. London, 1877. New edition, 1888. | sion, A FINE ART, 515 ting things upside down, bringing them into all sorts of unnatural, impossible, and absurd, but not painful or dangerous, com- binations, is a source of universal delight; and the laughter which it gives rise to is, as Aristotle says, the expression of our surprise at seeing things so out of place, yet not threatening danger. And the range of this delight extends from the poorest practical joke to the creations of the greatest dramatic poets, Nonsense. being what it is, may be further described as the flower and fruit of wit and humor, when these have reached the final stage of their growth to perfection, But how shall we hope to define wit and humor, and to distinguish one from the other? ‘We may repeat the arguments or rest on the authority of Aristotle, Ben Jonson, Hobbes, Coleridge, and a host of minor philosophers, and we may produce our proofs and illustrations from Aristoph- anes, Shakespeare, Rabelais, or Cervan- tes; but, after all, we only find ourselves in the predicament of the Court of Chan- cery in Lord Eldon’s days, as Sir George Rose described it in his law soag of that time: — Mr. Parker made matters darker, Which were dark enough without: Mr. Cook quoted his book, And the Chancellor said, ‘‘I doubt.” We too, like the chancellor, can only say “We doubt,” if we are asked what is the real distinction between wit and humor. At best we can perhaps say, as St. Augus- tine, said when asked “What is time?” — “1 know when you do not ask me.” We all of us use the words with a feeling that they are not synonymous, but with a feel- ing also that they have hitherto defied all the attempts to reduce them to exact anal- ysis, even when the task was undertaken by such a master of metaphysical inves- tigation as Coleridge; and that only at extreme points is it perhaps possible to distinguish and define. We sometim use the name of wit merely to describe some clear statement in well-chosen words, or some collocation of con! thoughts and arguments, which is are brought together not to promote laughter, but to elucidate the subject under discus- And, on the other hand, we often516 accord the title of humor to any genial expression of sentiments rot specially characterized by fun. Of wit, in its more usual and proper sense, the pun, which merely brings words into laughable apposi- tion, is the lowest form, while of the higher kinds the epigram, bringing incon- gruous thoughts and images together in terse and balanced phrases, is at once an instance and the summary. And then the ridiculous position and aspect into which men, and the affairs of men, are thus brought, gives opportunity for the expres- sion of that intellectual contempt and scorn which so usually forms a character- istic part of what we call wit, that it has been held by some great authorities to be the very wit itself. Humor shows no such scorn, for it feels none. It looks wi kindly and playful forgiveness on all those frailties, incongruities, and absurd contra- dictions of mortal life, which wit sternly condemns with the harsh severity of an overweening pride of superiority. A com: parison between Butler's “ Hudibras "and the “Don Quixote” of Cervantes (which Dr, Johnson has already made with an- other motive than ours) brings into clear contrast the difference between wit and humor, when we thus take them where they stand widest apart. We doubt whether Butler is now so highly appreciated as in the days of Dr, Johnson; or even as he was fifty or sixty years ago, when Cole- ridge in his “ Aids to Reffection in the Building up of a Manly Character,” recom- mends the study of “ Hudibras ” as a help to the formation of sound religious con- victions. But while we grant with John- son “that if inexhaustible wit could give perpetual pleasure, no eye would leave half read the work of Butler,” how utterly cold, heartless, dreary, does Butler's work remain! It is all wit, wit as it is in its glacial period, where granite may exist with the ice, but no trace of life is to be found ; and not even the master hand of Hogarth can enable us to feel that Hudi- bras and his rascal crew are real men and women, The contrast is complete when we turn to the work of Cervantes, Here all is sunshine, warmth, and genial life. Not only the noble-hearted knight who NONSENSE AS A FINE ART, who is no less absurd than his master in the possession of what that master has lost, —not only these, so good in their absurdity, but the rascally innkeeper, the galley-slaves, and all the personages, good and bad, who fill the stage in motley suc- cession, are so genial, so human, that the reader feels relationship with them all, and is ready to say with the Roman dramatist : “Lama man; such kinship is nothing strange to me.” We have not quoted any of the “ senten- tious distichs” of Butler, for they are known far and wide to those who have never looked into “Hudibras,” and who, if they did so, would be agreeably sur- prised to find the poem as “full of quota- tions” as did the man who went to see “Hamlet” acted, when he had never read the play. But from Don Quixote” we will give one quotation, which may be called nonsense, while it is a true instance of the deep and genial pathos of humor which pervades the whole boo «I donot understand that,” replied Sancho. “TI only know that while I am asleep I feel neither fear nor hope, nor trouble nor glory. Good betide him who invented sleep, the cloak that covers up all a man’s thoughts, the food that satisfies hunger, the water that drives away thirst, the fire that warms the cold, the cold that tempers the heat; and, in a word, the current money with which all things are bought, the scales and weight which even the shepherd shares with the king, and the simple with the sage.” “What nonsense!” says common sense. “How could a man invent sleep?” If we reply, “How could Macbeth murder sleep?” perhaps common sense might matter with George ITI,, “ Shakespeare! Shakespeare ! horrid stupid stuff; but we must not say so.” But we grant that it # nonsense ; and yet we say that in those nonsensical words of poor blundering Sancho lie all the meaning, all the depth of human life and pathos, though not the poetical beauty, which we have in Shake- speare’s own description of sleep: — ‘The innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor's bath, Balm-of hurt minds, great nature’s second cours has lost his wits, and the friendly squire | Chief nourisher in life's feast,NONSENSE AS Such a contrast as we have here drawn | between Butler and Cervantes may give a practical illustration, though not a scien- tific definition, of the difference between wit and humor, at their extreme points of opposition. But we do not pretend that it helps us to distinguish their currents where they mingle at a hundred points. We will not undertake to say whether ydney Smith was a wit or a humorist, or what proportions he was both. Was it wit or humor to say, on the question of paving St, Paul’s Churchyard with wood, “Tf the dean and chapter would lay their heads together the thing would be done ?” The polished, epigrammatic terseness, the clearly suggested though unuttered thought that these dignitaries were block- heads, the intellectual scorn, the covert play on words which in themselves form merely a commonplace observation — all these show true wit. All are the proper marks of wit. Yet they are not the less bathed in an atmosphere of genuine hu- mor. The witty canon was himself one of the chapter which he mocked, and his scorn included himself in his genial play. So, too, are wit and humor inextricably mingled in his reply to the friend who asked him if it was true that he had been sitting to Landseer for his portrait: “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” * Here are all the marks of wit, as we have just enumerated them; but they become no less marks of humor, as they all fuse themselves into the funny, humorous image of the portly divine sit- ting up like one of Landseer’s dogs, and “quoting Scripture like a very learned clerk.” Again, in what class shall we put that four de force when to the challenge tofind rhymes to “ cassowary "and “Tim buctoo” the impromptu reply was madi When I was in Africa, I one day heard a native singing to a hymn-tune, — If I were a cassowary, In the plains of Timbuctoo, Td eat up a missionary, Hat, and bands, and hymn-book, too. ‘© This, which we take to be the true story, is no | way diseredited by Landseer's statement to Mr. Frith, that he (Landseer) did not ask Sydney Smith to sit to him, and consequently did not receive the supposed | refusal. t A FINE ART. 30 ‘The distinction in question is, however, of the less practical importance to us here, because, as we have said, we are treating, not of wit or humor, but of that ripe out- come of either or both which we call non- sense; nonsense as a work of art. E: cept for bringing in an occasional side- light we shall confine ourselves to English nonsense ; and still further limit ourselves to tracing the outlines of a few of the many great and perennial branches of that mighty secular tree, without being able to take much heed of the countless leaves and blossoms to which it gives fresh life year by year. Even so, we shall have to divide our subject into as many heads as those in the repertory of Hamlet’s players, or ina sermon preached before the Long Parliament at Westminster. There is the nonsense of the story-teller, of the moralist and even the theologian, and of the dram- atist; there is the nonsense of poetry, of satire, of parody, of caricature, of the comic journal; there is nonsense with a “tendency,” as the Germans say; and there is nonsense “pure and absolute,” such as Mr. Lear tells us has been his aim throughout his books. First, then, of the story. We do not here speak of the great nonsense romances of Pulci, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, Sterne, and the creator of the * Arabian Nights ;” but of the stories which some- how and somewhere took root and grew before the earliest Aryan or Indo-Ger- manic migration begun, which have trav- elled into every land, and have found their way into every nursery, and are every- where with us in their old or in new forms. Some people find themselves wiser and better, or at least more self-respected, by calling these stories “solar myths; we are content to talk with our children of Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, or Jack the Giant-killer, who still keep their rightful places among the new and not unworthy aspirants, introduced to us by Mrs. Ewing or Mr, Kingsley, Mr. Lear or Lewis Carroll, All these stories are in their own way works of art—of the fine art of nonsense. But one of them has been raised to the rank of a masterpiece by the creating hand of a great poet. We mean the * Nonnes Preestes Tale” of Chaucer,513 Let us then examine critically this master- piece in the art. Charles Lamb's landlord found “ much indifferent spelling in Chaucer,” and Ar- temus Ward says of him: “Mr. C. had talent, but he could not spell; he is the worst’ speller I ever knew.” And it is more by the antiquated spelling than by the obsolete words or grammatical forms of Chaucer that so many are deterred from the enjoyment of his exuberant fun and humor, as well as fine poetry. A lady once told us that she knew “ Morte d’Ar- thur,” by reading it in Caxton’s original black letter ;* but we doubt whether many persons could be found who have even Tead it in the Southey-Upcott reprint with the old spelling in modern type. And, notwithstanding a recent attempt to prove ne contrary by the publication of an edi- tion of Shakespeare with the old spelling of the quartos and folios, we venture to say that even his plays would have re- ed a sealed book to almost all of us, editors had till now retained that spelling, instead of substituting that of their own day. And as to Chaucer, let any one who has hitherto been so deterred, look into Mr, Cowden Clarke's admirable “ Riches of Chaucer,” and the scales will fall from his eyes. Dryden modernized Chaucer in another fashion, It is bad work enough, yet not so bad (for how could it be 2) as when he helped Davenant to re-write Shakespeare's “ Tempest.” The “Nun's Priest's Tale” was prob- ably an old and familiar nursery story. Its concluding incident forms the sub stance of the little fable. Dou Coc et dou | Werpil,” in the * Book of Fables” which the Anglo-Norman poetess Marie de France, writing in the thirteenth century, tells us “was turned by Ysopez from Greek into Latin, by King Henry (one Ms. reads Alured, ée., Alired), who loved it well, into English, and by herself from English into French.” + Chaucer tells us how Chaunteclere the cock dreamed that he saw a beast of a color “ between white and red,” who would have made arrest upon his body ; but having been persuaded by Pertelote the hen to disregard the warn- ing was actually seized by a fox, and hardly escaped with life. But what a cock and hea they are! ‘They are not the mere talk- ing fowls of Pilpay, Esop, or Gay they are not creatures of undistinguishable + Ie is sad to think that the one perfect copy of this, the original edition of cur old national epic, went to ‘America after the recent sale of the Osterley Library. 1 'Pousies de Marie de France, par B. de Roquefort, fi, 240, 404 NONSENSE AS A FINE ART. | form like the Quangle-Wangle, the Dong, | or the Snark ; ‘nor impossible couples like the Owl and the Pussy Cat, or the Walrus and the Carpenter. They are an actual cock and hen, in the yard of an actual widow, though, as the poet’s manner is, the actual is always raised to its ideal perfection, so that we say of the whole picture what the poet himself .says of Chaunteclere’s crowing — “It might not be amended.” And then Chaucer endows the cock and hen with all the characteris. tics of a true gentleman and_matroni: dame, according to his own ideals of both. ‘The human qualities are not merely added mechanically to those of the fowls, as the ordinary fables, but so interfused into them that the whole becomes anew crea- tion, in which each is a real part of the other, And thus that incongruousness in which the humor consists is raised to its highest pitch, so that it too “cannot be amended.” Chaunteclere, perfect in his plumage and his crowing, who sits among his hens on. their perch, or leads them into the yard to find the grains of corn, speaks familiarly of his shirt, as his wife docs of his beard; and his talk is that of ‘a courteous and learned Christian gentle- man, while Dame Pertelote is, in like manner, an ideal matron :— Courteous she was, discreet, and debonair, And compenable, and bare herself so fair, Sithen the day that she was seven night oid, ‘That truely she hath the heart in hold Of Chaunteciere, locken in every lith: He loved her so that well was him therewith But such a joy it was to hear them sing, When that the brighté sun began to spring, In sweet accord —"* My love is far in land.”” When Chaunteclere, waking in a fright, tells his dream to Dame Pertelote, as they sit at roost on their perch, she banters him with mock indignation :— How dursten you for shame say to your love ‘That anything might maken you afeard! Have ye no manne’s heart, and have a beard? For that the indignation is banter, the poet indicates by his characteristic way of sly allusion, when he makes her de- clare, — For certes, what so any woman saith, We all desiren, if it mighté be, ‘To have a husband hardy, wise, and free; where she hints that if she had really thought her husband a coward, she would have made the best of the matter, as a good wife is bound to do. Then looking at the matter from a homely standpoint not less natural now than it was five hun-NONSENSE AS dred years ago, she sets the dream down to indigestion, and prescribes a domestic dose of medicine which — ‘Though in this town be no apothecary — she can and will herself prepare from the proper herbs in the yard. And lastly, her husband being a learned man, she quotes Cato’s advice not to care for dreams. Chaunteclere does not gainsay the wisdom of Cato, but tells Dame Pertelote that there are greater authorities on the other side. Of these he cites a number, sacred and profane; relates appropriate narra- tives which he has read in some of these ; but finally declares that when he looks at the beauty of his wife's face he feels no fear, but defies the dream and its warning. But he defies the medicines too: — For they be venemous, I wot it well : T them defy: I love them never a deal. And then, while he cannot refrain from covertly relieving his fe by the Latin quotation, — Tn principio _ Muliet est hominis confusio, he hastens to add with the courtesy and gallantry of the gentleman he is, — Madam, the sentence of this Latin is, Woman is manné’s joy, and manné’s bliss. The courage, with which his wife’s beauty inspired him, nearly cost him his life. The “ beast of ' color betwixt white and red” did ‘make an arrest upon his body.” The shrieks of Dame Pertelote brought what Mrs. Quickly calls “a res- cue or two.” Men and women, dogs and hogs, cow and calf, join in the pursuit; and as “out of the hiv’ came the swarm of bees,” the fox might have had the worst of it, if Chaunteclere had not mean- while delivered himself by his own wit. Here we must leave this delightful piece of nonsense. From the Icelandic Edda, we take another old nonsense story and poem — “The Lay of Thrym”—which we may properly call English, for it is a legend of our English ancestors, which must have been often sung or told at English fire- sides, while Woden and his sons were still the gods of England. Thor had lost his hammer; the shrewd and mischief loving Loki, whose business it is to get the gods out of scrapes into which he de- lights to see them falling, learns that the giant-lord Thrym has stolen the hammer and buried it eight miles deep, and will only give it back if the goddess Freya be- comes his wife, But “wroth was Freya A FINE ART. 519 and snorted with rage, and the hall of the gods shook ” when Thor went to her bower, and “this was the first word that he spake : ‘Take thy bridal veil, Freya, we two must drive to Giantland,’” She refused, and “at once all the gods went into council and all the goddesses into parley.” The giants would soon be dwelling in the land Of the gods, if Thor did not get back his hammer. He yielded to the political ne- cessity, though he feared that the gods would call bim a lewd fellow; and “then they wrapped him in the bride’s veil, and gave him the great Brising necklace, and let the keys rattle down his girdle and the woman’s coats fall about his knees, and fastened the broad stones [brooches] at his breast, and wound the hood neatly about his head. Then spoke Loki, Lau- fey’s son: ‘I will follow thee as brides- maid; we two will drive to Giantland.’” They soon got there in Thor's car drawn by goats. Thrym called his brother gi- ants to the bridal feast, Thor ate for his share “a whole ox, eight salmon, and the dainties cooked for the ladies, and drank three casks of mead;” and when Thrym declared that he had never seen a bride eat and drink like this, “the quick-witted bridesmaid sitting by found ready answer to the giant's speech: ‘Freya has not eaten for eight days, so eager was she to be in Giantland.’” 'Thrym was satisfied by this and by a like explanation, when Thrym, having raised the bride’s veil for a kiss, was startled by her hideous eyes ; his sister or mother demanded the bride's red rings for the bridal fee, and Thrym called for the hammer wherewith to “ hal- low their hands in wedlock ;" and Thor no sooner felt the hammer in his hands than he slew with it the giants, and gave hammerstrokes instead of red rings to the sister.* ‘An instance of the employment of non- sense in the service of morals and religion might seem to be promised us in the name, the plan, the purpose, and the open- ing lines of “ The Ship of Fools,” ¢ the old * Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 175+ + The German origina, by Sebastian Brandt, was ublished in taped translations and imitations speedily preached irom" the yelp’; fs popularity was, great Brough the following centary. ‘The fundamental idea is that of the shipping off the fools, that isthe vicious, the immorah_ and the trreligionsy of every rank amd keind and i isa stern and fearching denunciation of the whole state of national demoraliation which was then preparing the way for the Reformation. ‘The old English version by Alexander Barclay isa free adapta tion of the orjginal to. the then stave of Englan. An excellent rey of this version, with facsimiles of the ‘uaint and carious woodcuts of the original German, Seas published in. 1874, with a critical introdaction by TH. Jamieson.520 English version of which describes the desired assembling and shipping off of the fools of England. And some humorous passages we might quote; but invaluable as the whole book is both to the philolo- gist and to the student of the social and religious life of England immediately be- fore the Reformation, for our present use the bulk would not equal the sample. We look for “quips and cranks and wan- ton wiles,” we find along and grave dis- course or sermon, Yet the Reformers were not wanting in the love of nonsense. ‘The wit of Eras- mus is well known, Of Luther's intense love of fun the readers of this review will remember a proof, given in its pages three or four years ago, in that astonishing dec- aration of his, the purport of which was that a Christian man might lawfully hear or tell a story of the grossest kind, if he did so from pure love of fun and not to excite vicious passions. And Latimer, in his comparison of Satan with “the rest” of the bishops, and the declaration that the former was the bishop for his money, gives us one of the finest specimens ex- tant of what we here call the nonsense of theology And now I would ask a strange question — who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing his office? I can tell, for I know him, who itis: T know him well.’ But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should'name him. “There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England, And will ye Know who it is?" I will tell you: it is the devil. He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure, ye shall never find him unoccupied; he is ever in his parish; he keep- eth residence at all times; ye shall never find him out of the way, call for him when you will he is ever at home; the diligentest preacher in all the realm; he is ever at his plough : no lording, nor loitering can hinder him; he is ever applying his business, ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. In the medieval mystery-plays the devil with his sword of lath was a common butt for ridicule; and the name and contents of Ben Jonson's play, “The Devil is an Ass,” show how the tradition was carried on. And Coleridge and Southey in re- cent times revived the profane banter in their “ Devil’s Thoughts.” The poem, indeed, claims to have a moral purpose; but, as Lamb reminded Southey when ‘he regretted the want of “a sounder religious feeling” in Lamb's “Elia,” there was no one who more ha- NONSENSE AS A FINE ART. bitually made fun of the devil than did he (Southey) with all his orthodoxy: “ You have flattered him in prose; you have chanted him in goodly odes. You have been his jester; volunteer laureate, and self-elected court poet to Beelzebub.” * Grimmer is the humor of Burns’s “Ad- dress to the Devil;” but there is true, not mere comic, pathos in the concluding stanza, which Carlyle has compared with the like regret of Sterne’s Uncle Toby :— Bat fare ye weel, auld Nickie-ben! O wad yé tak’ a thought, an’ men! * Ye aiblins might, I dinna ken, Still hae a stake T’m wae to think upo! yon den Ev’n for your sake. Another Scotchman, the Rev. Zachary Boyd, in the seventeenth century, may be said to have applied the art of nonsense- writing to make a metrical paraphrase of the Bible, for the edification of his read- ets or hearers. His soliloquy of Jonah in the whale’s belly anticipates the objec- tion of modern sceptics that in the ori; nal text there is no connection between the soliloquy and the supposed occasion of it; for in the paraphrase it thus be- gin What house is this? Here’s neither coal nor candle! Where I nothing but guts of fishes handle! Land my table are both here within, Where day ne'er dawn’d, where sun did never shine. ‘The like of this on earth man never saw, A living man within a monster's maw ! Buryed under mountains which are high and steep! Plunged under waters hundred fathoms deep! Not so was Noah in his house of tree, For through a window he the light did see: He sailed above the highest waves; a wonder, Land my boat are all the waters under. In this poem, too, we have the longest Alexandrine on record : ‘Was not Pharaoh a great rascal ? Who would not let the Children of Tsrael go into the wilderness, with their wives and their sons, and their daughters, and their flocks and their herds, for forty days and nights, to celebrate the Paschal? This certainly comes up to Pope’s defi- ion of the Alexandrine — Which, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. * Leuers of Charles Lamby edited by Talfourd, i 17, "‘The best verses of The Devst's Thovghts” are by Coleridge. Souther's enjoyment of nonsense writing ie shown more fay in “The Doctors” a book which, ike his cartier “ Omniavay'is fal of eyriows, though somewhat ponderors learning, as well ae fun. it walked the town awe, nowNONSENSE AS A FINE ART. A suspicion that there was some love of fun with this reverend gentleman's desire to edify, may arise in our minds; and a like suspicion may be excited by the Corn- ish parson, who, when he had read the words as to the camel going through the needle’s eye, told his village flock : * You will not understand this: but it is as if T were to say, it is harder than for a coo to climb up an elany [elm] tree, and ca’avy [calve]in a maggoty pies [magpie’s] nest.” We remember Charles Buller, himself a Cornish man, telling this story some sixty years ago, his eyes, as usual, sparkling with fun. Greece led the way in nonsense, no less than in poetry, sculpture, painting, archi- tecture, philosophy, history, and science ; and if we had not limited ourselves to the consideration of English nonsense, we must here have entered on a discourse on Aristophanes, But the limitation is no disadvantage, for we need not fear to add the name of Aristophanes to those of the Greek dramatists with which Ben Jonson so proudly brings the name of Shake- speare into comparison. Shakespeare in nonsense, as in everything else, is our greatest artist. True to nature, true to art, Shakespeare embodies nonsense, as he’ embodies history, philosophy, poetry, in life and action, giving to it,as to each of these, its proper place and proportions. Yet such is his appreciation and love of fun for its own sake, that besides all the humors of his many individual and sub- ordinate characters, he has four, if not five, plays —“ Love's Labor’s Lost,” “ Merry Wives of Windsor,” “Taming of the Shrew,” “Comedy of Errors,” and per- haps “ Midsummer Night's Dream” — of which the motive is nonsense ; and three, if not four others—the two parts of “Henry IV,” “Twelfth Night,” and “ Midsummer Night's Dream,” if we ex- clude this last from our former list, in which nonsense holds well its own, by the side of the serious part of each of these dramas. It was, we think, rather a moral bias than critical insight which led an undoubt- edly great authority to say that Falstaff is an embodiment of wit and not of humor. ‘There is bad humor as well as good, in more senses than one ; and the fascination which that wicked, selfish, heartless old man exercises over all of us now, no less than over his victims in the plays, can only be explained by the steadily flowing geniality of temper and disposition which certainly characterizes Falstaff, and which we must call humor, in however bad a 520 man we find it. Is there, for instance, any definition of humor which would exclude the scene between Falstaff and the chief justice? What is “Boy, tell him I'm deaf;” and “He that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him;” or the advice to the chicf justice’s servant whom Fal- staff pretends to take for a beggar? ‘The absurd complications of * The Com- edy of Errors” make no demand on us for moral approval or disapproval; they are pure nonsense, so extravagant in their laughableness that it is a relief to the mind, tired out with fun and maclness, to welcome the appearance of the aged ab- bess, and to hear her, — Oh, if thou be’st the same AEgeon, speak, And speak unto the same Aimilia. The key to the play of “Midsummer Night's Dream” is its name ; it is what it is called. The four lovers, at cross-put- poses from the fickleness of one, and the arbitrariness of the father of another, go ona midsummer night into a wood near Athens, There they all fall asleep and dream of fairyland; and after a night spent between dreaming and waking they come back in the morning with their tirst loves and engagements restored, thanks, as they fancy, to some intervention of the fairi So, when Bottom and his fellows had gone into the same wood to rehearse their play, the latter ran away frightened by the reappearance of Bottom from the bush into which he had retired, and in coming out of which he seems, in the dark, to have some monstrous form, And then Bottom remains, and goes to sleep, to dream also of fairyland, but in a way suggested to him by his own last words in which he defies his fellows “to make an ass of him.” ‘This is not our account of the matter, but that of Shakespeare him- self, as he puts it into the mouth of The. seus, when he hears the lovers’ story of themselves in the morning. Every detail of the play can be shown to be in accord- ance with this view of it; but for our purpose we would only speak of the fairy scenes which are the perfection of beauty in nonsense. Happy is the man — we say it with the authority of that inveterate playgoer, Charles Lamb — who has never seen the court of Oberon and ‘Titania, ex: cept in his mind’s eye. In the words of the writer referred to below, “All our illusion is broken when we see a great flesh-and-blood girl representing the fairy * For such an analysis of the play we may refer to an ancien Fraser's begneine for December, 1854522 qucen, whose courtiers are “ the cowslips tall,” and whose guards leave her for “the third part of a minute,” to ‘kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,” or “war with rear-mice for their leathern wings: or who — ‘The honey-bag steal from the bumble bees, And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, nd pluck the wings of painted butterflies, ‘o fan the moonbeams from her sleeping eyes. Any outward material representation of these things is simply an_ intolerable sham ; while to him who beholds only with the mind’s eye not only do they all pre- sent themselves in a hatmonions picture, but even Kottom, with his ass-head in the midst of the tiny sprites who “hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes,” excites no more disturbing sense of the monstrous and improbable than such an appearance would do in an actual dream. And every one has experienced that ina dream the most incongruous or impossible combina- tions excite no surprise, And then if ‘Theseus and common sense insist that this fairy-land is nonsense, we only reply, that it is the nonsense of the most ex: quisite art. We might fill page after page with the incongruous, topsy-turvy absurdities of Launce, the two Gobbos, Dogberry and Verges, the grave-diggers, and other such among the minor characters of Shake- speare ; but we prefer to give our atten- tion to what our readers will agree with us is the most perfect piece of nonsense which Shakespeare has given us, — the play of “ Twelfth Night.” “The play has its, serious elements, of persons and of situa- tions. ‘The modest sweetness of Viola and the dignified ladyhood of Olivia give these a high place among Shakespeare's many beautiful female creations. ‘And here, as always, the poet is true to the laws of nature and of dramatic art, and nonsense appears in fitting subordination to the nobler and graver concerns of life, But ithin these limits we have all the wit and humor of pure, unalloyed nonsense, exist- ing only for its own sake, and revelling, as Malvolio says, “without mitigation or re- morse of voice.” As often as Sir Toby, the clown, and Maria, and their butts, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Malvolio(all finely, differenced from each other) come upon the scene, we have on all sides rattling volleys of wit and humor like the salutes on a royal birthday or jubilee ; and we find ourselves in an atmosphere so exhilarating that, like boon companions over their NONSENSE AS A FINE ART. wine, we are ready to laugh before we rightly know what weare tolaugh at. We can never know who and what were “Pigrogromitus and the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus,” of whom the clown talked one night, and of whom we have only that meagre record of the poor foolish knight, who tells us that “he had no more wit than an ordinary man or a Christian.” Yet the mere names give us a sense of pleasure, and make us believe that, as Sir Andrew says, they made a piece of “very gracious fooling.” The fooling goes on, stage by stage, till it reaches its climax in the scene in which the clown, disguised as the curate Sir Topas, visits the chamber in which poor Malvolio is “laid in hideous darkness,” where we pity him, though he deserves his treatment, The whole scene is a masterpiece of fun, and every word is a gem, like each of those pearls and rubies which drop from the mouth of the princess in the fairy-tale, as often as she opens her mouth. The clown soliloquizes as be puts on the gown which Maria brings him, ‘Well, Pl put it on, and I will dissemble myself in it; and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown,” Then ‘The competitors enter. Sir Toby. — Jove bless thee, master Parson. Clown. — Bonos dies, Six Toby: for as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said'to a niece of King Gor- boduc, ‘That that is is; so I, being mas- ter Parson, am master Parson, for what is “that” but that, and ‘* is”? but is? ‘The clown has a double edge to his phil- osophy and his logic; for while Malvolio is to hear the voice of Master Parson, Sir Toby knows that “that” is sof “that,” and “is” is xof “is.” ‘The false minister announces himself with the accustomed benediction of the Church, and then to Malvolio’s exclamation. “Sit Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady,” he pronounces the exorcism: “Out, hyperbolical fiend ! how vexest thou this man! Talkest thou nothing but of ladies?” Then the dialogue proceeds : — Mal.—Sit Topas, never was man thus wronged: good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad they have laid me here in hideous dark- ness. Clown. —Fie, thou dishonest Satan! 1 call thee by the most moclest terms, for Lam one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy: sayest thou that house is dark? Mal. — As hell, Sir Topas. Clown. — Why, it hath bay.windows trans-NONSENSE AS parent as barricadoes, and the clear-stories | towards the south-north are lustrous as ebony; | and yet complainest thou of obstruction? fal. — {ar not mad, Sir Topas; I say to you, this house is dark. Clown. —Madman, thou errest. I say, there is no darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog. ‘Mal, — 1 say, this house is as dark as igno- rance, though ignorance were as dark as hell ; and I'say, there was never man thus abused. [am no more mad than you are: make the trial of it im any constant question. ‘The sham Sir Topas replies by asking “what ie thinks of the opinion of Pythag- oras concerning wild fowl;” and at last leaves him, with the warning that “ he will not allow of his wits till he holds the opinion of Pythagoras, and fears to kill a woodcock lest he should dispossess the soul of his grandam.” Then he carries on a conversation with himself and with Malvolio in his double character of clown and parson, not less full of witty and hu- morous banter, and at last ends with the artless. question, put in his own proper person: “But tell me true, are you not mad indeed? Or do you but counterfeit ?” If there were no Shakespeare we should. find no lack of good nonsense in the other Elizabethan dramatists; but the stars do not shine in midday sunlight, and the fun even of “The Alchemist” and “The Knight of the Burning Pestle” is coarse and ponderous by the side of that of “Twelfth Night.” In the days of Shakespeare the fool was still an actual personage in royal courts and noble households; nor is the race yet extinct. One of the last official fools of the English court was Archie ‘Armstrong. Like other great men who have died on the anniversary of some great national institution with which their fife had been bound up, and which they might ke said to represent, Archie Arm- strong died on the first of April (1646). But King Demos has still his jesters ; and in our own time we may reckon Hood, the elder Matthews, Albert Smith, Corney Grain, and Grossmith, among the legiti- mate successors in England’ of Archie Armstrong. Milten, grave and serious from his youth upwards, joined “L'Allegro” with 11 Penseroso,” and thus calls on “ heart- easing Mirth :' Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, | Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 1 A FINE ART. 523 Such as hang on {ebe’s cheek, And love to live in dimple sleck ; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, ‘And Laughter holding both his sides ; which must have been laughter for its own, sake, or such as a living man of letters and statesman means, when he says, “I think the day is lost in which a man does not have a good laugh.” Wordsworth, not less severe than Milton, bolds that man to be a favorite child of nature whose heart every hour runs wild; and records in verse that will not die his hearty sym- pathy with old Matthew, a man often “tired out with fun and madness,” and how they sang together — ‘That halémad thing of witty rhymes, About the crazy old church clock, And its bewildered chimes. Lord Tennyson we may claim as a lover of nonsense, on the evidence of his “ Spin ster’s Sweet-arts.” Gray, known best to us as the author of the “ Elegy in a Coun- try Churchyard,” could write the “Long Story;” and the melancholy Cowper, to whom’ we owe so much true poetry, and that not only which he himself wrote, but also what he taught others to write, will probably be always most remembered by his “John Gilpin.” 1f we cannot give Dr. Johnson so high a place among poets as he probably himself aspired to, we may name him as one of our greatest men of letters ; and Mr. Hill, quoting from Bos- well, says of him, “He was the most hu- morous of men,” “incomparable at bui- foonery,” full of * fun and convivial hamor and love of nonsense.” We may suspect that the gambols of that massive intellect may have been somewhat ungainly; but then, if we may apply the great man’s own words without irreverence, we would quote again from Boswell: * Like a dog's walking on his hind legs, it is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Of Butler's Hudibras,” and of the hard, cutting wit of this great satirist, we have already spoken, When we learn from him the bitter and scornful hatred in which some of the strong intellects of the Res- toration confounded the cant of fanatical or sordid sectarianism with the Christian faith, which they understood no better than did Tacitus or Pliny, it is pleasant to think that England had in those same days a greater genius and a truer satirist than Butler, though one of whom it is un- likely that Batler ever heard the name. Bunyan’s * Pilgrim's Progress” is in.the best sense a satire, though it is a satire524 of love and pity even more than of stern condemnation of sinners; and we may treat it as no way alien to our own sub. ject, for a vein of marked though repressed humor runs through it all, Sometimes the humor comes to the surface, as in Faithful’s trial, or the conjugal talk of Giant Despair and his wife. In the trial scene, the unjust judge, the Lord Hate-Good, with his coarse rage against the prisoner, is the counterpart of the actual Judge Jeffreys; and the first witness, Mr. Envy, eager to testify even before they “give him his oath,” and de- claring, at the conclusion of his evidence, that he will be ready to give more if they want it, reminds us of the like method of Titus Oates. Both were, no doubt, drawn from the life, and from Bunyan’s own ex- perience. Here, too, is the curtain conversation of Giant Despair and his wife: “Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence, So when he was gone to bed he told his wife what he had done; to wit, that he had taken a couple of pris- oners, and cast them into his dungeon for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also, what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound; and he told her. Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without any mercy.” And the like conjugal talk, with the like deference of the Giant for his wife, goes on, night after night.* Pope wrote some good nonsense, in va- rious styles, but all satirical, and all witty rather than humorous, His “Verses by a Gentleman of Quality” are nonsensical enough, but too slight for further notice. “ The Dunciad” is too coarse and scur- rilous, Theobald and Cibber and the starving writers in Grub Street were far from being so utterly bad as Pope makes them out; and if they had been so, it did not become the master of the rapier to resort to the bludgeon, nor the gentleman to the scavenger’s shovel. The invective of “ The Dunciad” “ wants finish,” to em- ploy the words of one skilled in the art; and as we turn its pages, we find ourselves repeating the Somersetshire couplet, — A harnet zat in a holler tree, A nasty spitevul toiid wer’ he. ig humorous intervention of Mrs, Diffidence is not in the first edition of the “Pilgrim's Progress,” but was added in the second and following editions, Ttis one of many instances of Bunyan's careful r of Mis work. See Mr. Olfor's critical edition, pr for the Hanserd Knollys Society. NONSENSE AS A FINE ART, And what greater bathos can be found than that to which Pope sinks when he condescends to a verbal parody, and one of the vulgarest specimens of that mean- est form of bad joke, on Denham’s fine | lines, — © could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme: ‘Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage, without o’erflowing, full. And this was he who could write that dig- nified invective on Addison, of which we may fitly quote the last lines against Pope himself: — Who but must laugh if such a man there be, Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? But neither in the “Prologue to the Satires,” from which we take the last lines, nor in the satires themselves, does Pope's wit rise into that kind of nonsense which we want here, It is rather to“ The Rape of the Lock” that we turn for an example, for our purpose, of that satirical wit and tun, We call “ The Rape of the Lock” satitical, because Pope himself says that its purpose is to laugh at “the little unguarded follies of the female sex,” though the epithet seems almost 10 strong for a poem which does rather picture an laugh at, than condemn, those follies. It has a light and sparkling sprightliness, like that of the plays and verses of Con” greve, which Thackeray delighted to de- scribe, But those butterflies, or rather ephemeral gnats and mosquitoes, the beaux and rakes, the flirts and prudes, of those teacup days, are poor creatures aiter all: — Let us not talk of them: look, and pass on. Pope, “laughing in his easy chair,” dispensed his’ moral praise or blame to the ladies and gentlemen, the authors and politicians, around him. ' Butler satirized the fanatics and hypocrites of his own age. Swift directed the scathing thunder- bolts of his bitter and scornful hate against human nature itself; and the hardest, cold- est intellect of the grown man may feel itself farther chilled by the description of the Strulbrugs who never die, of the phil- osophers of Lapnta, or the Yahoo set be- fore us as our own image. And yet, by a strange irony of fate, “Gulliver's Travels” has become a favorite story-book for boys and even girls, and takes its place on their bookshelves with “Don Quixote ” and the “Pilgrim's Progress.” And this because Swift, like the writers of these, had the power of telling a story, and of clothingNONSENSE AS A FINE ART. with flesh and blood what must have else remained moral abstractions. Sterne seems to require a place by himself. We have classed him with the writers of nonsense-romance, but he dif- fers greatly from them all, and more so than they do from each other. He is a thorough humorist. He relies for his artistic effects on sentiment and feeling, not on contrasts of thoughts and words. His humorous art is of a high order, and perhaps not least so in his perpetual_use of that shameful device by which (as Cole- ridge points out) he attracts his reader to garbage which would otherwise be merely disgusting, by presenting it at the hands of the childlike and guileless Uncle Toby, or the not less honestly minded Mr. Shandy and Trim. Of parody there are two kinds, The one is the vulgar parody or travesty, of which Pope has given us an example, which we have already referred to, but purposely abstain from quoting. It takes some noble poem, and for its idea, thoughts, and images, substitutes the writer's own low and vulgar fancies, which he couples as far as possible with the words of the original which he thus out- rages. Such parodies are like the pra tical jokes of the brainless youth, or still more brainless man, which have no fan in them, and only excite laughter in those who ‘seek and find their amusement in that which gives offence and pain to others. And such parody gives pain not only to the travestied author, but, when he is beyond the reach of the parodist, to every thinking reader, who is so unior- tunate as to know the parody, and cannot keep it out of memory. The other kind of parody is that in which the comic writer gives you real fun of his own, while cloth- ing it in the style of some great author, but without any mere employment of his words, unless it be in so faras they are taken to express that style. No one en- joys Homer less if he reads the “ Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” or Swift's “ Bat- tle of the Books; nor the mock epics of Tassoni and Boileau, or Pope’s “ Rape of the Lock,” because he detests Scarron’s “Virgile Travesti.” Boileau justly says that he made a barber and his wite talk like Dido and Aoneas, while Scarron made Dido and AEneas talk like fishwives and porters. In more recent times the “ Re- jected Addresses,” and the imaginary reviews and criticisms of the “Biglow Papers,” are among the happiest speci- mens of the better parody. ‘Their wit is all good-humored, and probably no one of 525 {the authors so burlesqued would have de- sired a greater revenge than that which Sir Walter Scott is said to have taken when a friend reading him the “ Rejected Address of W. S.” asked him whom it was by, and he answered, “It must be mine, but I not think I had written anything so bad.” The doctrine of evolution may suggest that caricature, or the nonsense of the pencil, was unconsciously brought to light by the first rude attempts at figure draw- ing. We may half suspect some covert humor in the artists of the pompous forms which accompany the cuneiform letterpress of the Assyrian inscriptions. ‘There can be no doubt that the Egyptians and the Etruscans knew what caricature was ; and the walls of Pompeii have pre- served some of its popular features. Christian art produced what was in truth, though in the most solemn and even awful form, a kind of caricature, in the triumphs, or scealled Gances, of death, in the tres: coes of the Campo Santo of Pisa, the paintings of the covered bridge of Lu- cerne, and the like representations with which the name of Holbein is usually coupled. The wood-engravings of “The Ship of Fools,” of which we have already spoken, are fine specimens of the carica- ture in illustration of books which has ever since gone on in endless variety. Hogarth employed the genius and power of a great artist in the service of nonsense, caricaturing sometimes with a moral pur- pose, as in the “Marriage 4 la Mode ;” sometimes for pure fun’s sake, as in “ The Election,” or “The March to Finchley; "" d Cruikshank has followed Hogarth with no feeble steps. ‘The coarse though humorous caricatures of Gilray were suc- ceeded by the more refined work of H. B._ And ‘now, for many years past, these and other kinds of social and political ‘caricature have united and culminated in the pages of Punch, which in its first num- bers modestly calls itself “the English Charivari,” but which has long since far surpassed both that French comic paper and the German Kladderadatsch, and not less kept ahead of its English competi- tors, It may wane from time to time, but always to wax again. In nothing does it show the advance of the. art of caricature more than in the production of some of its most comical effects by pretty — and not, as the old fashion was, by ugly — pictures. This is constantly 'seen in the Harge cartoons as well as in the lesser en- gravings. An excellent instance of this is the recent print of twelve handsome526 young matrons in a jury-box, with, under it, the happy epigrammatic words, * A fair jury, and every one a homeruler.” The combination of thought, word, and drawing, is perfect. And what Punch has done in’ the refinement of caricature, it does still more completely as regards comic writing, We owe more to Charles Dickens than to any one else for the cre- ation of a comic literature, in which the most humorous and laughable effects are produced, without any recourse either to the moral or the physical filth which a Fielding or a Smollett thought himself bound to rake into, or even to revel in, The nastiness has happily become repul- sive to modern taste ; and it is a reliet to know that we can have all our fun without it. But if we owe this chiefly to Dickens, the editors of Punch deserve our praise and thanks for the thoroughness with which they have carried on the new tradi- tion, If the lake poets showed that they could at least recognize nonsense-writing as a find art, their old school-fellow, Charles Lamb, living in London in the service of the kings of India who then reigned in Leadenhall Street, carried that art to its height. His familiar letters, and his “Essays of Elia” overflow with non- sense, or rather they are, “without o’er- flowing, full ;” for the perfect finish and completeness of the workmanship are always worthy of the choice materials em- ployed. Never a thought or word too much, or too little, And Lamb's nonsense is pure and unalloyed, nonsense for its ‘own sake, in which the most lynx-eyed German critic might be deiied to find a “tendency,” moral or immoral, to explain why the writer wrote. “ Tendency,” there is none. The fun is there in happy seli- sufficiency, and this not the less because of the pathos which we cannot but think may be ever and anon felt to be present in the fun —reminding us of the heavy burden of a lifelong sorrow, which poor Lamb seemed unfitted to bear, but which he did bear in brave, uncomplaining silence. We think we shall but re echo the opinion of Lamb's readers if we say that of all his fine nonsense the “Essay on Roast Pig” isthe finest. With what learned accuracy does the author follow in his Chinese manuscript the progress of mankind through the seventy thousand years, called by Confucius “the cook's holiday,” to the accidental discovery by the swineherd Ho-ti and his son, which led to their trial at Pekin, “then an incot lerable assize town,” before a judge and jury proceeding NONSENSE AS A FINE ART. with all the forms of English law. The jury, “in the face of all the iacts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given, to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present, without leaving the box, or in any manner of consultation whatever, brought ina simultaneous verdict of not guilty.” ‘We will not pursue the narrative, how the judge, “who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision,” nor follow the historical progress of events through subsequent ages. Nor will we dwell on the philosophical and sentimen- tal reflections of the author, nor on the autobiographical memories of “ my good old aunt,” her plum cake and the beggar, and of student days at St, Omer. We do but remind the reader of these treasures. of nonsense, though he can hardly have forgotten them. Contemporary men of genius often fail to appreciate each other, and perhaps Can- ning knew no more of Lamb than is im- plied in a scornful invitation to him “to praise Lepaux,” in chorus with Coleridge, Southey, and Lloyd. But Canning was a true lover and writer of nonsense. The promise of the Eton boy-editor of the Microcosm, when he commented on the nursery rhyme of “ The Queen of Hearts ” with learned gravity, was amply fulfilled in the pages of the “Anti-Jacobin,” while he shared his honors with Frere and other young wits. And though we cannot say of the nonsense of the “ Anti-Jacobin” that it was not written in a temper of ex- aggerated prejudice, political and social, yet time has happily purged all that dross away, and in the finest pieces has left us the pure gold for our enjoyment. There is for us no bitterness in the laugh in which we comprehend “ The Needy Knif rinder "and “The Friend of Humanity. ‘ew of us know, and fewer care, about “The Robbers,” and the “Cabal and Love,” or “Stella” * (great as. their au- thors’ afterwards became), but every one delights in the play of The Rovers,” the notes to which have preserved those names like flies in amber, which is itself the maddest farrago of nonsense, with its total disregard of *the uniti classical or romantic, and in which, after “the ghost of ProLocur’s GRANDMOTHER by the father’s side” has appeared to soft music, and sunk ina flash of lightning, a | Roman legion, with eagle and battering- wnat the Court Theatre at Wei- fed a commonplace suicide for the # For representa ‘mar, Goethe subs “double arrangement” of his original ** Stell | quizzed by the inti Facobiin.